CHAPTER 20

Jenna

They took me to a hospital in Pendrake City for bruises, minor burns, and smoke inhalation.Medicine on Tellus is so good that a day later you’d never know the bruises and burns happened and my lungs were clean.They kept me for a day just for observation and rest, then released me with orders to rest for a few days more.That’s all, just rest.I went back to Elliot’s apartment for the unique experience of going to his bed and not having sex.Lots of cuddling with the guys, but no sex.It was a funny thing, but lying with the guys and doing nothing else, I had never felt so cared for.

Daddy and Uncle Neal returned to the city with us, and we had a family reunion.The guys impressed Daddy with their protectiveness of me and their readiness to attack anyone who threatened me.He and my uncle especially loved the story of how Byron went tearing off after Dominic and captured him.It went a long way towards cementing a kind of friendship between my father and my suitors.Daddy said he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of me, in his words, having “three boyfriends,” especially three who were older than I was and out of school, but as long as they were all looking out for me, he would have an open mind.

“A father,” he said, “wants his girl to be with someone who will be good to her, treat her well, care about what she needs and the way she feels.While I can’t say I understand my daughter being with more than one man, if she had to be in a relationship like that, at least she seems to have chosen the right ones.”He said that as a man of science, he’d spent his life in the pursuit of unusual, unexpected, challenging ideas.“I thought the most challenging ideas I’d ever come up against were a parallel world where there’s a population of people who become intelligent, two-legged dragons, saturated with an energy field that can power whole continents.It seems I was wrong.”He discreetly didn’t bring up or ask anything about the intimate details of my relationship with Elliot, Byron and Cade, and we certainly didn’t volunteer any such information.There are certain places that a father and a daughter don’t go, even though the father knows very well what’s happening.He was happy knowing that I was happy and genuinely cared for, and what went on when I was alone with my three dragons remained an open, unspoken fact.

There were, however, other facts that were much more open, and much more spoken about—by all of Tellus.The humans from another world where there were no Scalers, and my father and uncle’s project to bring the Ambience to Earth, became the sensation of the world.Elliot, Byron, and Cade now had the task of protecting me not from Gorgonite zealots, but from their world’s press.

When the news got out that I was involved with one of Tellus’s champion athletes and his friends—one from a prominent, wealthy political family and one who had been caged for working with would-be insurrectionists—my anonymity, and Daddy’s and Uncle Neal’s—became a thing of the past.The Tellus media swarmed around Elliot’s building for any sign of us, Elliot, Byron, or Cade.People from school, the few friends I’d made and others who’d barely spoken to me before, now bombarded my mirror messaging system asking as many questions as the press.When I was well enough to leave Elliot’s place, I would probably always have to be escorted by one of the guys; if I went anywhere alone, I’d be mobbed.In fact, all of us would have to face that possibility.As a basic introverted personality, I found the whole thing more than a little intimidating.I thought it would be actually less scary to have to deal with just the Gorgonite zealots—but that was a thought I kept to myself.

Meanwhile, since the people of Tellus demanded answers about my father, how he’d gotten there, and what he was doing there, he and Uncle Neal faced the world bravely, with help from Byron, who helped to set up the first press conference with a traveler from a parallel universe.

I sat up on Elliot’s bed with Elliot on one side of me and Cade on the other, and together we watched the monitor.A press conference was taking place at the Capitol Building across town.At a table on a stage sat Daddy and Uncle Neal, with a man with a gavel sitting by them, Byron and some members of his family and other officials standing behind them.Drone recording devices floated in front of them, and the screen cut away for a moment to a different angle on a big auditorium which was filling up with members of the press and still more government officials.I had goosebumps knowing that we were now watching a turning point in history.

Elliot took my hand, and Cade rested a comforting hand on my knee as things got under way.

The voice of an announcer on a PA system filled the auditorium once everyone got seated.“We will now hear an opening statement from Dr. Marshall Callaway of Malibu, California.”

After a little hubbub, one of the drones floated near my father.He began, “Hello, members of the press and assembled officials of Pendrake City and United Tellus.My name is Marshall Callaway.I am a physicist and inventor by profession and as you just heard, I come from a place that doesn’t exist…in this world.Here on Tellus, what is California to me is somewhere else.I have come to you from a world nearly identical to this one; a planet called Earth.”

Voices spread through the room like the wildfire that we’d recently escaped.When they died down, Daddy continued.“Many of you will have heard accounts of my world from the group that I’ve been working with, the Intercross.The mainstream scientific community of Tellus has never seriously considered the veracity of their stories, and the religious authorities of your world have dismissed them.They’ve taken Earth as what my world would call an ‘urban legend’.But in my world we also have a saying: ‘Every legend has a basis in fact.’I’m here today to present to you the facts about Earth, about life there, about my people—and what it could all mean to your world and mine.”

Again the voices welled up, more strongly than the last time, and the man with his gavel pounded it and called the assembly to order, then called them to order again.I had the keen sense that after this conference, “order” on Tellus could start to take on a different meaning.

Slowly, the assembly quieted down and prepared to listen to my father’s story.I was glad to be here watching with Elliot and Cade instead of there with all those people, much as I would have wanted to support Daddy.As he went into the story of trying to help Earth with its energy and environmental needs and how he discovered the Ambience and Tellus, I imagined the reactions of the people listening to him there—and the reaction of someone who was probably watching somewhere else.

Out there was an enemy whom I pictured sitting in a chair somewhere, watching his own monitor, with his massive, black, scaly body, clutching the arms of his chair with huge, black, scaly claws—and probably wanting to use them to shred my father at this moment.Nidaag, the leader of a group of Scalers who hated humans for being equal to his own people; Nidaag, who raged at the idea of a place called Earth, must be watching this conference and making his plans for what he’d do about my father, my uncle, and me.The Gorgonites had tried to steal the plans for a weapon of mass destruction to use against humans and we’d stopped them.But they would never give up their dreams of Scaler supremacy, especially now.All of Tellus would soon want to know everything about an Earth that was not just a myth and Nidaag and his followers would never accept any kind of coexistence with humans unless it meant the Scalers lording it over us one-bodied people forever.

They’d be more dangerous than ever now. Elliot and Cade must have known what I was thinking, because of the way Elliot’s hand tightened around mine and Cade’s hand tightened on my knee.It was their way of telling me that nothing would happen to me as long as they and Byron lived.But I had the most terrible feeling that Nidaag would soon do something to ensure we wouldn’t pose a threat to them for much longer.

*****

Enjoy what you read? Then you’ll love book 3 of The Dragons Of Tellus Series.